1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal composition useful for preparing optical components such as optical compensation film, used for liquid crystal display devices and so forth, and a retardation film composed of the liquid crystal composition.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, polymerizable rod-like liquid crystal compounds have widely been used for producing optical compensation films. In the process of aligning the rod-like liquid crystalline molecules on an alignment film, the molecules at around the interface with the alignment film may horizontally be aligned with their longitudinal axes laid in parallel with the film surface, meanwhile the molecules at around the interface with the air tend to align obliquely at a certain tilt angle, often showing a state of hybrid alignment as a whole. In the conventional process of forming an optically anisotropic film having the rod-like liquid crystal compound uniformly and horizontally aligned therein, methods having occasionally been adopted include a method of sandwiching a rod-like liquid crystal compound layer with an upper alignment film and a lower alignment film to thereby form a retardation film, followed by separation of the alignment films; and a method of reducing the tilt angle on the air interface side by adding a surfactant (for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 2003-238491 and 2000-105315). The method of separating the alignment films from the retardation film after formation thereof occasionally resulted in breakage and scratching of the retardation film in the process of separation. On the other hand, the method of adding a surfactant occasionally resulted in eye holes (hajiki) or poor adhesion on the alignment films due to action of the surfactant exerted on the alignment film, leaving the problems for further improvement.